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EVER had trouble explaining to somebody why Australia taking more immigrants can’t make any real difference to world poverty? In a dramatic presentation (Click here to see video) journalist Roy Beck uses jars of gumballs to show why. On stage he stacks up jars containing 3000 gumballs, representing the 3 billion people in the world who live on less than $2 a day.

The so-called ageing problem is a result of two factors – declining mortality and declining fertility. But, for Australia at least, these trends have existed for the last 150 years or more. In 1860, Australia’s death rate was 2.0% p.a. - it is now 0.7%. The birth rate was 4.3% p.a.

Pratt, it seems, was not just corrupt himself but a major corrupter of others through bribery and intimidation. Ex-PMs Fraser, Whitlam and Hawke, according to the Age, were on the Visy payroll. (It does not mention that a more recent ex-PM Kevin Rudd was embarrassingly compliant, even visiting the dying Pratt and temporising with his demand that charges against him be not merely dropped but declared untrue.) A huge issue of politicians being "retrospectively bribed" by the business community is opened up by these revelations.

Tony Jones opened by saying that Mark Latham had belled the cat by pointing out that you can't propose to limit population unless you can limit immigration. So why wouldn't the government promise to limit immigration? Jones to his credit kept the debate on population and immigration rather than sliding across onto asylum-seekers in the way for which Q&A is notorious. (A common pattern with Q&A is that, whatever the nominated topic, before long the conversation gets on to asylum-seekers and tends to stick there.)